Karl Fleury-Frenette

The technical challenges of the Solar-Orbiter EUI instrument

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) onboard Solar Orbiter consists of a suite of two high-resolution imagers (HRI) and one dual-band full Sun imager (FSI) that will provide EUV and Lyman-α images of the solar atmospheric layers above the photosphere. The EUI instrument is based on a set of challenging new technologies allowing to reach the scientific objectives and to cope with the hard space environment of the Solar Orbiter mission. The mechanical concept of the EUI instrument is based on a common structure supporting the HRI and FSI channels, and a separated electronic box. A heat rejection baffle system is used to reduce the Sun heat load and provide a first protection level against the solar disk straylight. The spectral bands are selected by thin filters and multilayer mirror coatings. The detectors are 10μm pitch back illuminated CMOS Active Pixel Sensors (APS), best suited for the EUI science requirements and radiation hardness. This paper presents the EUI instrument concept and its major sub-systems. The current developments of the instrument technologies are also summarized.

Design status of ASPIICS, an externally occulted coronagraph for PROBA-3

The “sonic region” of the Sun corona remains extremely difficult to observe with spatial resolution and sensitivity sufficient to understand the fine scale phenomena that govern the quiescent solar corona, as well as phenomena that lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which influence space weather. Improvement on this front requires eclipse-like conditions over long observation times. The space-borne coronagraphs flown so far provided a continuous coverage of the external parts of the corona but their over-occulting system did not permit to analyse the part of the white-light corona where the main coronal mass is concentrated. The proposed PROBA-3 Coronagraph System, also known as ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun), with its novel design, will be the first space coronagraph to cover the range of radial distances between ~1.08 and 3 solar radii where the magnetic field plays a crucial role in the coronal dynamics, thus providing continuous observational conditions very close to those during a total solar eclipse. PROBA-3 is first a mission devoted to the in-orbit demonstration of precise formation flying techniques and technologies for future European missions, which will fly ASPIICS as primary payload. The instrument is distributed over two satellites flying in formation (approx. 150m apart) to form a giant coronagraph capable of producing a nearly perfect eclipse allowing observing the sun corona closer to the rim than ever before. The coronagraph instrument is developed by a large European consortium including about 20 partners from 7 countries under the auspices of the European Space Agency. This paper is reviewing the recent improvements and design updates of the ASPIICS instrument as it is stepping into the detailed design phase.

Portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometer for coating thickness measurement

A handheld x-ray spectrometer has been realized and tested. The purpose of the device is to measure the thickness of coated samples in the range of 1-1500 nm in an industrial environment. Accuracy of approximately 3% has been achieved in this range with a measurement time of 1 min. Automated software has been implemented to allow utilization by a nonspecialist operator. An automated calibration procedure, based on measurements of reference samples, is used.

Spectral splitting planar solar concentrator: experimental testing of a design aiming at dye sensitized solar cells

We present a new solar concentrator concept. This concept is based on spectral splitting. It implies reflective, refractive and diffractive elements that allow two spectrally differentiated beams to reach different and/or unmatched lattice solar cells. The aimed geometrical concentration factor is 5× and the theoretical optical efficiency of that concentrator concept reaches theoretically 82%. The following study will discuss the concept of such a solar concentrator. A practical application to dye sensitized solar cells is given. The manufacturing and design of the element is then exposed. Those elements have been tested in the laboratory. Good agreements with theoretical simulations are demonstrated.

Substrate Mode-Integrated SPR Sensor

We present the design, implementation and characterisation of an integrated surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor chip involving diffractive optical coupling elements avoiding the need of prism coupling. The integrated sensor chip uses the angular interrogation principle and includes two diffraction gratings and the SPR sensing zone. The theoretical design is presented as well as the fabrication process. Experimental results (response of a reference water droplet and phosphate-buffered saline/water kinetic) are presented and compared with those obtained with the classical Kretschmann prism coupling setup. We believe that this prism-free architecture is perfectly suitable for low-cost and reproducible SPR biochemical sensor chips since the sensing zone can be functionalised as any other one.

Integrated prism-free coupled surface plasmon resonance biochemical sensor

We present the design, implementation and characterization of an integrated surface plasmon resonance biosensor chip involving diffractive optical coupling elements avoiding the need of prism coupling. The integrated sensor chip uses the angular interrogation principle and includes two diffraction gratings and the SPR sensing zone. The theoretical design is presented as well as the fabrication procedure. Experimental results, using reference index fluids, are compared to theoretical predictions and prism coupling experimental results. We believe that this architecture is perfectly suitable for low cost and reproducible SPR biochemical sensor chips since the sensing zone can be functionalized as any other one.

Laser thermoreflectance for semiconductor thin films metrology

We present a thermoreflectance-based metrology concept applied to compound semiconductor thin films off-line characterization in the solar cells scribing process. The presented thermoreflectance setup has been used to evaluate the thermal diffusivity of thin CdTe films and to measure eventual changes in the thermal properties of 5 μm CdTe films ablated by nano and picosecond laser pulses. The temperature response of the CdTe thin film to the nanosecond heating pulse has been numerically investigated using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The computational and experimental results have been compared.

A far infrared/terahertz micromechanical sensor based on surface plasmons resonance

This paper describes a new concept related to the bolometric micromechanical sensors for detecting far IR and THz radiation. We believe that this concept permits a low cost and ease of fabrication of large bi-dimensional array of sensors with an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. The micromechanical sensor comprises a thermo-sensitive bi-material (multi-material) micro-cantilever beam with a selective absorber dedicated to far IR and THz radiation energy, and optical readout system based on surface plasmon resonance for detecting the bending of the micro-cantilever element. To increase the radiation detector sensitivity, the SPR phenomenon is used for cantilever deflection monitoring.

Magnetic and conversion electron Mössbauer spectral study of amorphous thin films of DyxFe100-x and Dy20Fe80-yCoy

Amorphous thin films of DyxFe100−x and Dy20Fe80−yCoy, with various x and y values and of ∼40 nm thickness, have been prepared by sputtering on polyimide films. Their magnetization curves and the Mossbauer spectra indicate that at 295 K the iron moments are preferentially oriented parallel to the film in Dy2Fe98 and that Dy6Fe94 is paramagnetic. The DyxFe100−x thin films, where x is 17, 20, 24, 29, 32, 35, and 37, show perpendicular magnetic anisotropies and moderate coercive fields of at most 150 kA/m, whereas the Dy20Fe80−yCoy thin films, where y is 8, 13, 16, and 20, thin films show stronger perpendicular anisotropies and larger coercive fields of ∼400 kA/m. The introduction of cobalt into the amorphous thin films increases their coercive field and the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The Mossbauer spectra of the DyxFe100−x and Dy20Fe80−yCoy amorphous thin films consist of broadened sextets which have been analyzed with a distribution of hyperfine fields by assuming that the iron moments are oriented ...

Stoichiometry of DyFeCo magneto-optical alloys by combined PIXE/RBS

DyFeCo alloys offer suitable properties for magneto-optical recording. Their high write and erase sensitivity favors them as materials to design high density multilayer-based recording medium that would be addressed by temperature and field modulation. The samples consist of amorphous thin films of the order of 100 nm deposited by RF magnetron sputtering between an aluminum buffer and a thin aluminum native oxide capping layer onto Si or SiO2 substrates. The stoichiometry of these films has to be known in order to study their magnetic properties. Unfortunately, the analysis of this kind of sample is not obvious neither by RBS or PIXE. Indeed, as Fe and Co are neighbor elements, the RBS spectra do not allow to determine their elementary ratio. On the other hand, PIXE spectra are difficult to analyze due to the overlapping of the different peaks. By combining the two methods it has been possible to obtain the thickness and the stoichiometry of these samples. The experimental setup as well as the computation...